Sunday, February 19, 2012

Sometimes They Surprise You

I'll admit that sometimes I don't give the users I work for enough credit. They're really trying to do their jobs the best they can (sometimes no thanks to the technology that I support). Its very easy to get into the Us VS Them line in the sand game.

We've been revamping our web presence with many more great things to come in the future hopefully. One of the processes we go through every spring requires some notices and frequent updates of lists online. In the past this was all done manually with either IT or another department producing Word docs (in the past) or PDFs (since my arrival). Yes, every day, documents were re-generated and posted manually to the website. Its was every bit as tedious as it sounds.

We already had an application in-house that would have done most of this for us. For a variety of reasons it was never implemented and they were someone opposed to using it.

This month, as we spoke about how to streamline some of the things they're doing, the question arose - "How can we update this stuff daily without having to involve IT?" My answer was that we should use the application that integrates with their current project management software and posts it online in real-time.

The answer was a resounding "Let's try it!"

I tied up some loose ends on my part and they read up quickly on how to use the tool. In less than two weeks project documentation was successfully being posted online in real-time and they have complete control over the content.

Wow. For as much as there was unwillingness to use the tool before I was surprised they went for it. And we are using the tools we already owned to lessen the work. I wish this is always how it worked.